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Would you really want to force someone to be a part of your childs life? Think of the lasting effect that will have on the kid, knowing that his parent was a reluctant participant to their life. If they don't want to, don't try and force them. Your child is better off.

Hmmm can't change or run other peoples lives. Fundmental fact of life my divorce taught me. If (a man or woman) wishes to be in the childs life you'll know. It starts with a judge deciding custody, and vistation. From that point it is encumbant on each parent to be a civil as possiable. I got lucky, and my ex and I are now able to get along. Sometimes life stinks.

I was married for 20 years to my children's father and I had absolutely no control over him moving 1200 miles away after the marriage ended. I do not believe that you can fully control the actions of another person whether he/she is 17 or 70.

Shouldn't the goal be more about demonstrating healthy relationships to our children? If the relationship is healthy, they can gain a great deal from that experience. If the relationship is unhealthy they learn only to follow the same patterns in their lives.

My ex is involved in my childrens lives and is a very good dad. But together, we were unhappy. To stay together and perpetuate a miserable marriage would have taught my children that in a relationship, happiness is unimportant.

"My other ideas were along the lines of, choosing a different partner, waiting longer before you made the choice to have children with this person, getting an agreement beforehand that the partner really did want children with you at that point in time, etc., etc."

No guarentees it will work out even then. I just look at my ex and the father of her second child. They were in a LTR for a few years and now it is crumbling. As for me my ex we both wanted to have our son right way. A mistake for our relationship in hindsight oh well. Live and learn I guess. Both of us love our son. Human relationships are complex wonderful things that can't be neatly planed.

I wish I hadn't gotten married at 23. I was too young had never lived away from home (other than college dorms) , never bought my own car, paid my own bills or even written a check. I was so in love with the idea of a huge fairytale wedding and could not believe this guy I was dating for 7 months actually slipped a ring on my finger giving me carte blanche to fulfill every childhood dream of a grand catered affair!Suddenly after the big party where everyone worships the beautiful bride for 5 hours, reality hit me like a ton of bricks and I was too immature and stupid to tell my parents I had made a huge mistake. Even after 12 months of dating I barely knew this guy. His family was fractured and full of drama. They all hated one another. He was a bully and suffered from depression. Had I been older and more mature I would have seen red flags from a mile away. I do not blame him, he was just as naive and stupid as I was.My advise to my children, wait till you are out of college, do some traveling, start a career, get into debt then learn how to stay out of debt. Live an adult life THEN walk down the aisle when your wild oats are sown and you have your sh1t together.

The way that you have a non-custodial parent in the child life is for the grown-ups to eat there pride and be nice for the child sake. I know easier said then done. But, I do it. So it can be done. What makes me said is when the custodial parent punishes the non-custodial for whatever reason. In the end it just hurts the child.

As for poverty. We have been at war with it since the LBJ adminstration, and have just worsened the problem of broken homes. It is more about government assistance. (sometimes needed) vs. community ties that strenghtens our bonds to family and neighbors.

I think it is impossible to make someone be involved.Either they want to or they dont.Marriage and a desire to concieve a child together seems the best option for having a stable family. (Nuclear 2 parent family that is).

I was 25 when I met my husband. He had been on the same job for nearly 20 years. He had a son who adored him with whom he interacted well and given his job and the 150 mile difference, saw as frequently as possible. He has a very close family and we appreared to want the same things out of life. We discussed a month into the relationship whether he wanted to have any more children because I wanted to marry and have children and if he didn't, we needed to end the relationship.

We waited a year to marry and long story short, from there to the 12 year mark when I decided that the children would be better off living in a home without their bipolar father in it, his behavior was a steady decline. Having driven the 150 miles, rented a hotel room, etc. to see my stepson play football I was unprepared for him to not drive three blocks to see his 4-year-old son in a school program. Nor was I prepared when he missed every single game of the first season my middle son played baseball. Nor choosing to not attend every single high school choral or voice recital performance of my daughter. The list of things he has chosen to miss is long.

I learned quickly that if I tried to encourage him to be involved in his childrens' lives, and this was when we were still together, he would either not go anyway or he would complain about it so much that what the child remembered was not that he showed up, but that he did not want to be there.

He sees the children more than I thought he would but his quality time consists of trips to Wal-Mart or a fast food establishment. He never takes them overnight, chose not to take them to see his mother and the rest of the family for three years. The behavior makes absolutely no sense from a man who complained that his son lived so far away and that he was not "there" more for him.

Some people do not understand that it makes a difference for a parent to do more than provide for their physical needs. They do not understand that choosing not to attend functions hurts their children and they do not understand why they do not have a close relationship with their children because they believe they should be loved and respected for contributing to the production and maintenance of the children, period.

You see OP, some of us thought we chose well. With the information we had at the time, sometimes with the benefit of the experience of youth clouding our decisions, and to have people continually question why we were so foolish to marry or whatever is really pointless beyond recognizing things you should have seen that you either did not or chose (consciously or subconsciously) to overlook. Now, in hindsight, the fact that his son worshipped the ground he walked on was not indicative of his being a good father, but how needy a boy was who had no good parent between the two, yada, yada.

Children do well when they have at least one parent that provides a warm stable environment within which they feel safe and nurtured, period, regardless of whether that parent is a man or a woman, a blood relative, or an extended family. I think the best that we can hope for is yes, choosing better but this generation of children that have grown up with an absent or half-assed parent will become better parents themselves, whether they remain in the relationship with the mother or father of those children or not.

How do I make sure the father of my children is involved? Well, that's easy. I'll lock him up in the basement and then mandate my children go down and visit him every day, Hell, maybe he can even crack open a brew and teach em how to play poker down there......

OR, I can realize that THERE IS NO POINT IN FORCING someone to be a parent. All it does is cause psychological harm to the children who wonder why daddy (or mommy) doesnt really care or put forth the effort to see them. What I can also do is keep my children away from people like you FUTURESHOCK who would sit there and force feed them "statistics" and explain to them in a condescending way that they're little detriments to society. God forbid your husband ever up and leave YOU and you have to face your OWN so called "facts" and realize that your little girl is now inferior to all the other children in 2 parent families. Get off your high horse already........

1. Get married before having children.2. Stay married after having children.Simple, really.

NO, it's NOT that simple. How do you force someone to stay in a marriage when he/she does not want to? How do you stay in a marriage when your partner is abusing you and/or your child? How do you stay in a marriage when your partner is unfaithful? How do you stay in a marriage when the arguments have gotten so volatile that the children are being subjected to psychological trauma? If it were that black and white, then more people wouldnt be filing for divorce. People stray from their responsibilities, people are selfish, people are cowards and give up to easily. You can try your damnedest to keep your marriage together but it takes TWO to make it work.....

Happy Fathers Day! Staying married is not always solution, for the same reasons another poster stated. I don't know if you can influence another parent to do anything. Best you can do is advise them and hope they listen. I will agree after the dissolution of a marriage that the parties put there resentments behind, and focus on parenting.

This post was not in any way meant to attack Americans for their constitution or their cultural beliefs. I find your country fascinating to study actually....a real experiment in "by the people for the people" and how at the end of the day, only special interest groups really have a voice. I think your forefathers are would be very disappointed to see how their ideals have been twisted over the years. Of course, they didn't write the constitution from the "worst case scenario", they were true optomists who failed to take into account human nature.

I'm an all American girl, sheesh the ancestors from both sides of my family came over on the Mayflower (no joke!) So, as an American I can vouche for myself and for the people I choose to hang around when I say that not all Americans approach the "freedom of speech" as freely as futureshock. I am an empathetic, compassionate person and I live by the motto "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." I feel that encouraging and uplifting others is more beneficial than belittling and condescending them and I'm not going to open my mouth to say something rude just for the sake of "free speech." I dont know though, maybe I'm only like this cause I live in Washington State and am close to the Canadian border and travel there often? LOL, maybe I'm more Canadian than I thought ay?

Future, the vast majority of my post which you ignored noted that my ex chose not to be involved when we were together, living in the same house, etc. This after involvement with my stepson that never prepared me for his having a second chance and flushing it down the toilet.

You may not mean to but many of your posts are negative and hateful toward women, I would imagine because you have issues with your mother and stepmother that you have never really adequately addressed.

Again, you may not mean to but your comments about women are obtuse, suggesting that you have lived your entire life with your head in the sand and have not seen anything around you except the tiny microcosm you grew up with. You suggest that single mothers are damaged goods and yet I saw you post to a thread that what attracted you to your husband was his status as a single dad. So it is attractive in a man and unattractive and a huge mistake for a woman?

Somehow men are extraordinary for actually raising their children while women, if they made a decision that was not particularly bright, but they sucked it up and did what they had to do to raise those children and raise them well are somehow lesser people than the men that do the same thing? Why?

It truly, truly does not matter how or why you wound up a single mother if you are today doing your best to raise your children thoughtfully and with the love and attention they need and deserve. Believe me, I came from a very middle class two-parent home, my mother was every bit as big a b!tch as your stepmom and she was my MOTHER.

If you really want to say anything valuable in the threads you start or post to why don't you try providing knowledge of how you raised your children and encouraging people that are having a hard enough time doing this (because give me a fuking break it isn't easy when you have two good parents) instead of constantly knocking people down.

If you cannot see where you are negative, I am not sure what to tell you. I don't want to be insulting and suggest therapy if you cannot see how your words speak to other people but in some ways you are every bit as irritating as the Mikd/PEI or whatever the hell he is calling himself. It is like each thread is a different version of how do we smack the single moms yet again.

Many of our children are better off without the deletrious influence of a bad parent, whether man or woman, and many of us struggle to keep the other parent in the chilrens' lives regardless of how much easier it would be to tell them they lost the right to parent. Does it matter that my ex lives here or somewhere else to the child he cannot bother to spend time with, the concerts, games, graduations he misses because frankly he is selfish and doesn't give a shit? Does it make me better than someone else that by the way he acted with my stepson I never saw that coming?

Well let me grab my gun, there seems to be a ballon-o-gram clown at the door.

Lizbeth, you're evil, creative, but evil (said tounge and cheek)

I would like to echo, packages major point. It doesn't matter how many parents are in a home as long as the kid(s) are well care for and loved. Anyway, the single parents are here because they'd like to have two adults in a single house. Afterall, this is a dating site. So, give the single parents some credit for trying to establish a "traditonal" home even if they don't have one now

I happen to be a father. My son's mother and I divorced when he was very young. I set up a file at the County Clerk's Office and told them my wages and had them set up a file for child support. This was done before I ever got served with divorce papers. I have been at every school event I possibly could, that I knew about. I have never missed a birthday either.

In addition to child support, I pay for his haircuts, school clothes, and have even sent groceries home with him. I make sure he has what he needs.

I am saying all of this not to brag on myself, but to make a point. If a man wants to be a dad to his kids, neither you, or anyone else for that matter, will have to make sure he is involved. He will be asking you about the parent/teacher conferences, mid-term grades, final grades, list for school supplies, etc, etc.

A lady I used to know had to always be the bearer of bad news for her kids, as the father would arrange to visit the kids, but rarely showed up. He didn't pay child support either. She would garnish his wages and he would switch jobs.

On the other side of that line, there are some men who find out about school events and so forth, AFTER the fact. So, the only thing I could say, with my experience as a divorced dad is to make sure the guy is informed. If the mother has full custody, she sees things brought home from school that the father won't know about unless there is communication.

Other than that, it is pretty simple. If the father doesn't want to be a father, the kids are probably better off if he doesn't come around.